DEMOCRATS, LOOK IN THE MIRROR

Nothing less will be sufficient

Vector illustration

This past Sunday I listened to a well-known Democratic influencer speak about the state of the country, particularly as it pertains to Donald Trump and the Republican party.

I agreed with his appraisal of Trump and the Republicans. His descriptions such as sociopath and psychopath work for me; I don’t think they’re hyperbole. But what struck me was a total lack of interest in looking at the mote in the eye of the Democratic party. No person, no organization, and no system that needs to reverse its fortunes can do so without looking in the mirror.

At one point he referred to George Lakoff’s description of the Republican party as the critical father and the Democratic party as the nurturing mother. I remember in the 1990’s when that seemed so astute, and perhaps at that time it was. But it isn’t now. Over the years the Republican party went from critical to abusive; the Democratic party became a mom standing outside the door while the abuse was happening, doing little to stop it, then offering the abused child milk and cookies when the beating was over.

Guess which one of those the child grows up to detest more?

One thing I will say about the Republicans; they’re willing to change on a dime if that’s what it would take to win. That’s hardly a compliment, just merely a statement about their corporate MO. More Republicans come from the business world, where if a product isn’t selling on Wednesday then you’d better change something by Friday. And if you don’t, the business could shut down by Monday.

The Democrats simply do what they do. If things aren’t working on Wednesday, then you do them again on Friday. And if a disaster occurs on Monday, you just continue in zombie form. The mere mention of fundamental change is considered risky, critical, and unworthy of a “real Democrat.” The party is big on truth-tellers, as long as they’re talking truth about the other side.

The problem with the Democratic party is not just the Republicans. The problem with the Democratic party is that it stopped offering the American people a cohesive, compelling alternative to what Republicans were selling. Unequivocal advocacy for the working people of the United States was at one point the party’s heart and backbone. Democrats of old stood up to corporate overlords: they didn’t play footsies with them under the table. And if the overlords didn’t like, no big deal. Remember FDR’s response to his gilded critics? “I welcome their hatred.”

Democrats in those days didn’t care what rich donors thought of them - partly because prior to the Koch brothers they didn’t have to, but also because it would have been against their principles to do so. Keep that word in mind: principles. The Democratic party, starting mainly in the 1990’s, decided we could compete with the Republicans for the big boy money if we simply made enough deals with the big boys. As a party, the Democrats went from “We feel your pain and we’re here for you no matter what,” to “We feel your pain, and we’ll do whatever we can to help you as long as it doesn’t threaten our donor base.” The party took the big money, thinking it could have it both ways. And too often it could not. The party sacrificed its spine at the expense of its principles. One has to ask, “What did that get us?” The answer, of course, is that it got us two terms of Donald Trump.

You can’t just blame the thief who came in during the night if you opened every window and door, then went to sleep.

A perfect example, of course, is Obamacare. During the 2008 campaign, Obama said universal health care would be the top priority during his first term. Once he got into office, however, insurance companies clearly had a talk with him: You can go this far but no further. There was to be no more mention of universal coverage or a public option.

What emerged was the Affordable Care Act. Yes it helped a lot of people, but none so much as the insurance companies themselves. It still left tens of millions of people uninsured or underinsured. It still left over a million people rationing their insulin. It still left over half of our bankruptcies, medical bankruptcies. It still left many people mad.

I remember a young man being forcibly removed from a Congressional hearing on health care because he kept shouting out, Public Option! In the 2010 midterms, Obama told Democratic candidates he wouldn’t campaign for them if they mentioned the phrase. Such was the new Democratic party. Little compromises here and little compromises there…

In the first two years of both Obama’s and Biden’s presidencies, both men had a trifecta. The House and Senate were theirs. Obama could have passed universal healthcare in his first two years, and Biden could have repealed that 2017 Trump tax cut in his (while immediately putting back in the middle class cuts, of course). No one thing has done more to create our obscene income inequality - the $50T transfer of wealth from the middle class to the top .001 per cent - than that tax cut. Blaming Republicans for “cutting needed services so they could pay for a tax cut for billionaires” was really something this year, when for the first two years of Biden’s term the Democrats could have gotten rid of the damn thing themselves.

Compromise your principles a little here, a little more there, and over time you’ve lost your moral authority. You can do a lot for people, but what they’ll remember is what you didn’t do.

All this happened because corporatists, once treated by the party with appropriate and healthy skepticism, came to be seen as the grown-ups who were there to save it. They would be the experts in the room, arguing that you had to run the party like a business. They didn’t listen too much to those they considered the “riff raff” in the party, who in their minds weren’t sophisticated enough to navigate power. They huddled in safe spaces like the Hamptons and Sun Valley, knowing nothing, not even a clue, about real lives lived by people outside their enclaves. I mentioned at a bigwig fundraiser once that we’d probably get some good advice if we were to ask a few questions of the servers. I remember being looked at like I had two heads. Such were the new breed of neoliberal donors and the operatives they trained. They posed as saviors and clearly thought that they were. In fact they were invaders.

Under the sway of this elite, the party lost touch with its core principles. Losing touch with its principles, it began to lose touch with its base. “America won’t have to worry about a fascist takeover,” said President Franklin Roosevelt, “as long as democracy delivers on its promises.” Too often Roosevelt’s own party didn’t heed those words, and now we are where we are.

After the 2024 elections, I ran for Chair of the DNC. I did so because of all I had seen, all I experienced, and what I could see coming down the road. I knew the culture of the party would need to change were it to survive as a powerful political force. I had seen the corruption inside the belly of the beast, and I knew it had to be expunged if the party was to emerge victorious in the future.

The DNC convention to elect its next Chair was mind boggling. Having won the Presidency again, Trump was putting together his next administration. And to me the dark clouds were looming. This wasn’t a conservative government that was on its way in, but a neo-fascist coup that was revving up to destroy our government. How anyone could not have seen this even then, I can’t imagine. Yet the convention was more like a frat party than a wake. People didn’t seem to register the horror that to me matched the moment. I expected us to at least be somber. But there was more singing and dancing than there was serious conversation. At the convention I saw the corruption at the top, cluelessness in the middle, and childishness at the bottom. It’s not that I didn’t encounter individuals who saw through the charade, because I did. But no one seemed willing to counter the establishment narrative that “Basically, it’s okay. We just need to make sure we win next time.” Obviously it wasn’t okay, and it’s not okay. Just blaming Republicans is not the answer.

The other compromise with ethics, integrity, and most importantly democracy that the Democratic party engaged in was with free and fair primary elections. Everyone knows by now that the DNC tipped the scales in favor of Hillary in the 2016 primaries. The proverbial grown-ups I mentioned earlier - the new iteration of Tammany Hall party bosses - considered Bernie Sanders an unacceptable choice.

It’s important to remember the traditional, more ethical role of a political party. First of all, parties are not mentioned in the Constitution; their outsized power today is preposterous. George Washington warned in his Farewell Address that they could form “factions of men” more loyal to their party than to their country. Our second President, John Adams, considered them the biggest threat to our democracy.

In the words of Thomas Jefferson, “The only safe repository for power is in the hands of the people.” Nothing should ever be considered a more important American creed. A party’s appropriate role is to stand in the background until the voters have chosen the party’s nominee. Only then are they to step in and help that person win.

Millions of volunteers, mainly young people, came out to support Bernie in 2016, yet the party bosses simply weren’t having it. If nothing else worked, their system of super-delegates would make sure voters wouldn’t have a chance to make what the bosses considered an “unwise” decision. Those voters used to be called their base, by the way.

If the DNC hadn’t put their finger on the scales that year, I don’t know who would have won the primary, Hillary or Bernie. But I do know this. Millions of Democrats wouldn’t have been in such a foul mood that November. The general election would have had a much different energy, and I doubt Trump would have won.

After the 2016 election, a group of Bernie supporters sued the DNC for unfair practices. Incredibly, the DNC’s defense was “Hey, we don’t owe people fairness! We’re a private corporation!” Yes, they’re a private corporation but they perform a quasi-governmental function; if they don’t play fairly they are betraying the public. Even more incredibly, the DNC won the case!

At that point, all constraints were removed. In 2020 - and I would know - the party recognized, however begrudgingly, its responsibility to let any FEC registered candidate have a chance to get their message to the public. But by 2024, they figured to hell with that. A small group of White House insiders decided that there would be no primary, that the threat Trump posed to our country was so great that the only way to save democracy was to suppress it. This was far too important a decision to leave in the hands of the people!

The DNC put out the word: Biden would be the candidate, and that was that. No other voices would be heard, even tolerated. “We will all line up and support the President.” I remember standing at the baggage carousel at the airport in Charleston, South Carolina, reading on my phone that DNC Chairman Jaimie Harrison had just said, “Helping Joe Biden win is our top priority,” when the primary race had hardly even started. I thought, “Wow, that’s not the role of the party Chair to say that.” I had no idea what was coming.

Partnering with their media cohorts, the primary was effectively cancelled but not cancelled. It reminded me of the Soviet Union, where the party would brag of free elections yet they themselves had chosen the candidates. No lies, no infiltration, no shaming was too low to go in the effort to peripheralize whoever’s voice they intended to shut out. When fate stepped in and President Biden gave a disastrous debate performance, the bosses then simply appointed his successor. And oh yes, there could have been a blitz primary; many supported it. Yes, it could have been taken to the floor of the convention! It would have actually been very exciting, and a boost of energy we sorely needed.

Don’t let anyone tell you the problem was that the President should have gotten out sooner. They’re all saying that now simply to cover their own asses. It should not have mattered whether or not the President was still running. Senators Eugene McCarthy and Robert Kennedy Sr. ran against Lyndon Johnson, and McCarthy doing so well in New Hampshire is what made Johnson drop out. “We don’t have a primary when there’s an incumbent President” was just one of the many gaslights put out on the internet and allowed to roam freely in people’s heads.

Rehashing history is not my intent. My concern is not with the past but with the future. Do I want the Democrats to win next year? I want them to crush it. Do I want a Democratic presidential candidate to win in 2028? I want him or her to crush it. But it won’t happen if the party doesn’t reclaim its principles, because without them it lacks what Martin Luther King Jr. called “cosmic companionship.” The party has to more than win individual elections; it has to win the hearts and minds of people who no longer trust Democrats to do what they say. The party will only win those voters if we return to our core: an unequivocal dedication to things that actually serve the average American, and commitment to the democratic process. Just complaining about Trump won’t win the future for the Democrats. Looking at ourselves, and cleaning our own house, is the only power great enough to override the darkness.

I agree with Sunday’s speaker that the crisis we face now is as great as any in our nation’s history. For those of us who see in the Trump administration a neo-fascist threat to democracy, nothing could be more important than that the Democratic party be strong. But the needed strengthening will not occur without some brutal self-awareness and acknowledgements of the party’s defects. We won’t be able to help course-correct the country if we’re not willing to course-correct ourselves. When and if we do, everything will change. If we recognize the mistakes we made, with humility and sincerity, heeding the call to make good on democracy’s promises and our responsibility to its principles, then the future will be ours.